


Waddles the Service Pig

by Neelh



Series: Waddles the Service Pig [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Amnesia, Drabble, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Post-Episode: s02e20 Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:24:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6127516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Waddles is a pig with the patience of a saint. Waddles, Saint of Mental and Emotional Healing. Mabel needs that on a t-shirt, pronto.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waddles the Service Pig

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i didn't deem these bad enough to tag but there are vague allusions to alcoholism and eye gore, but they are only in one line each. so please, if those trigger you, i'd advise you to be careful <3

**Stanley**

 

-

 

For a creature that has only been in his life for a couple of months, Waddles is surprisingly helpful for Stanley in the momentous task of recovering sixty years of lost memories. When he wakes up from a nightmare filled with unfamiliar faces and strange words said with a sharp and foreign tongue, the pig is just _there_. Waiting. Waiting at the foot of Stan’s bed, with his little piggy eyes watching with a dumb curiosity. And Stan picks Waddles up, holds the pig to his chest, and it’s calming, somehow. He can see why Mabel loves the thing so much.

Waddles oinks gently in his arms and he realises that he’s drifted off. Ah. The pig needs to relieve himself. Stan lowers Waddles to the floor and the pig runs out of his room and hopefully outside before doing his gross piggy business.

And when Waddles returns, Stan is cooking breakfast, and Waddles doesn’t tell if Stan gives him a bigger portion than usual.

 

-

 

And Waddles is with Mabel when she comes down with the scrapbook in one hand and Dipper’s wrist in the other, when she plops herself down on one knee and pulls Dipper onto the other. Despite the added weight of the twins pushing him down into the old yellow armchair, Stanley feels as light as a cloud or some dumb metaphor like that, even though the twins told him that they only arrived in Gravity Falls about three months ago.

Mabel points through pictures that they’ve been over several times yesterday, and when Stan still doesn’t recognise where that picture of him in the orange tracksuit came from, Waddles is there to be hugged.

When Dipper finds the video tape containing several various clips of Mabel and Dipper fooling around and the Stan Wrong Song, Waddles is there for Stanley to hide his face in.

 

-

 

There are some moments where Stan forgets who and where he is. It happens suddenly, without anyone noticing. One moment he will be making Stancakes (“They’re like pancakes, only they probably have some of your body hair in them!”), and the next, he will be clueless to his entire history, not knowing what he is doing, surrounded by strangers.

Then Waddles shows up, nuzzling Stan’s hands, licking his face, and even if he doesn’t know anything, the pig is there, and it doesn’t mind that everyone is staring in mixed horror and sadness.

 

-

 

**Stanford**

 

-

 

Thirty years of loneliness, of his senses being overloaded to the point of meltdown, of floating in endless vacuums for what felt like centuries, and Ford is still scared of the dark.

Of course, it’s not really the _dark_. It’s more of the fact that without his glasses, he can see things moving in the shadows, vague shapes with impossible anatomies, and the triangles. God, the _triangles_. They’re everywhere, and they’re always watching, and they’re laughing at him behind his back, and maybe he should go and see a shrink, but what’s he supposed to say? That he has lasting mental issues from being emotionally manipulated by a triangle?

There’s a knock on the door to the lab, and Ford glares at the shadowed door until it opens to show Mabel.

“It’s breakfast time, Great-Uncle Ford!” she says, her voice as chipper as a fleet of hyperactive fairies. She tiptoes in closer, frowning at him. “You need to sleep better. C’mon, though! Breakfast!”

Ford shakes his head in bewilderment, but he doesn’t complain when he’s pushed into a chair at the kitchen table and has a pig plopped onto his lap.

“Why have you given me, er,” Ford says, smiling with faint surprise, “Waddles?”

“Because you’re sad and Waddles makes people feel better!” grins Mabel, climbing onto the kitchen countertop in order to get some cereal from a high shelf.

 

-

 

She’s right.

And sometimes, when all Ford wants to do is raid the cupboard to find Stanley’s alcohol - and really, he could do so much better than that cheap stuff - sometimes Ford is interrupted by a sleepy pig, and he falls asleep in his old bedroom, curled up against Waddles and clutching him like a drowning man who has finally found a piece of driftwood to keep him afloat.

And some nights, Waddles is asleep, probably tucked in bed with Mabel, and Ford is alone.

 

-

 

**Dipper**

 

-

 

It starts the night after Mabel’s puppet show was ruined.

That is not causation or coincidence, but rather an unfortunate side effect of being possessed by a triangle.

Because Dipper had his body taken away from him, had his physical limits tested through self-torture by a demon, had been played for a fool. He had been alone, viewing the world like the cutscene in a videogame when the protagonist has a fully developed and awful personality.

And Waddles, somehow, ridiculously, wakes up at Dipper’s shallow and sudden breaths. He wriggles out of Mabel’s loving arms and flops onto the floor with a gentle thud before tottering over to Dipper’s bed.

Dipper picks him up by his squishy belly and gathers Waddles into his crossed legs. The pig’s coarse hair and heavy weight is a reminder of how he is real, of how he can feel, of how he is in control of his fingers slowly stroking Waddles.

A week later, he finds the picture of himself slumped over Waddles, asleep, in Mabel’s scrapbook.

 

-

 

And Dipper is scarred for the rest of his life after the summer he turned thirteen. He never really looks at stone statues or movies about the apocalypse ever again, and if he hears a high-pitched cackle he has to take a moment to remind himself that not every dumb laugh is an equilateral douchebag. Or maybe it was isosceles? It was never really clear.

Anyway, he steers clear of yellow triangles and occasionally gets invasive thoughts to gouge out his own eyeball before remembering that he does actually enjoy binocular vision and the depth perception he is granted that Bill probably didn’t have.

And Mabel’s pig is there with him and his sister. Waddles doesn’t really do much, but he’s just. There. Being cute and probably not aware of his own identity and purpose in life. Or maybe he is, and his entire identity is the unconditional love that he gives to Dipper and Mabel and Stan and Ford, which is really quite intelligent for a pig.

So maybe Dipper is overestimating Waddles and his sense of self, but there’s always been something special about that pig and his way of always knowing if something’s wrong, like some guard pig instinct. So when Waddles is there and Dipper can’t see, because Mabel is gone and the journals are ash and he is floating, there is always a comforting weight ready to be patiently cuddled.

Mabel made a really good call with that one, Dipper decides, petting Waddles’s head and being rewarded with a slobbery piggy lick. Yep, definitely a good call.

**Author's Note:**

> so national pig day is on tuesday, so happy pig day in advance?
> 
> waddles is precious and must be protected


End file.
